Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday April 14, 2011 @09:15AM
from the seems-a-little-cramped dept.

abednegoyulo writes "A vintage Vostok space capsule is headed back to its homeland with its new Russian owner, who bought the relic of the early days of human spaceflight for nearly $2.9 million during Sotheby's auction Tuesday. 'It surpasses Sotheby's own sale in 1996 of a more modern Russian Soyuz capsule for $1.6 million,' Pearlman added. 'That spacecraft, purchased by Ross Perot's foundation, is now on loan and displayed at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.'" Best treehouse ever.

Maybe Texas can make a deal with New York and trade it for the Enterprise. Houston should have gotten one of the Shuttles. They where the third most deserving location after the Smithsonian and KSC. Even if the only reason that Mission Control and astronaut training is there is because the SOB LBJ stole it from the Cape.

Houston should have gotten one of the Shuttles. They where the third most deserving location after the Smithsonian and KSC.

Although I agree that Houston "got the shaft" so to speak, I believe the reason they weren't selected is there's not enough tourism there. From Kens5.com [kens5.com], NASA administrator Charles Bolden said:

"This was a very difficult decision, but one that was made with the American public in mind. In the end, these choices provide the greatest number of people with the best opportunity to share in

Except now I have to go to one of the coasts for my kids to see a shuttle up close and personal. I know those of us in the fly-over states don't count but putting one in Chicago or St. Louis would have made it one hell of a lot easier for the rest of us to see it.

Well KSC has to have one. That is just a given. It is the real home of the manned space program. And one needed to go to NASM I mean it is the National Air and Space Museum even if it is going to an annex. It does seem to be a lot for NYC to get on as well. But just bring your kids to Florida if they want to see space stuff. You can go to KSC and see not only the Shuttle but the Saturn V, a TitanII Gemini, Mercury Atlas, Mercury Redstone, Apollo Saturn Ib and the Shuttle. But you can also take them Disney,

I'm acutally surprised how that the price tag for something like this is so low. Also, I wonder where it has been. TFA says they buyer will be returning it to Russia, and hopes to put it in a museum. So where has it been and how did it fall into private hands? TFA doesn't say anythign about that. But I bet the answer is a dirty, dirty story.

...are snatching up whatever space vehicles they can. I hear there's gonna be a shortage. Change the tubes in the radio, slap a coat of paint on it, and you can sell the US government seats to the space station. They're not going to get there any OTHER way. Sellers market...

It's quite the nifty souvenir, but considering that it's been totally stripped of its equipment, you're just getting an empty diving bell that went to space. For 2.9 million I'd expect to be able to see the equipment that was used back then as well, see how cramped it really was and so on.